HUAWEI’S new P40 and P40 Pro flagship smartphones are now on sale in South Africa and mark a decisive further move on the part of the Chinese tech giant to cut its dependence on reliance on Google and other US-based technology..
Available from all mobile operators and the official Huawei Store, the P40 and P40 Pro come with recommended price tags of R16,999 and R20,999 respectively and follow the earlier launch of the mid-range R6,499 P40 Lite.
During a live stream launch event, Huawei touted its P40 Series as the “king of smartphones” thanks to the cutting-edge camera tech, powerful Kirin 990 processor, and the sleek and slim design.
The P40 comes with a triple-camera system from long-time Huawei partner Leica, with a telephoto, wide-angle, and ultra-wide-angle lens, while the Pro version boasts four lenses, including a time-of-flight depth sensor for better background blur (bokeh) effects.
Like the budget friendly Huawei Y7p launched earlier this year, phones in the P40 line come without Google Mobile Services (GMS), a result of the ongoing trade spat between the US and China.
While they run on a legitimate version of the Android operating system, the trade ban prohibits GMS and other technology from US-based companies, from being installed on any new Huawei devices.
So, the company is touting Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) as a viable alternative to GMS, offering its own messenger, calendar, gallery, web browser and other key apps. In recent weeks it has been bringing on board more apps from major South African brands, some of them are in the form of Quick Apps, which can be found in the HUAWEI AppGallery.
According to Huawei, Quick Apps is an app ecosystem that houses a new type of installation-free app that updates automatically. “These apps provide an engaging user experience, offer powerful functionality, and enable automatic updates of HTML5 pages, much like any other Android apps. But the beauty of these apps resides in their limited usage of memory space,” the company said in a statement.
